"Lamentably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this subject in different keys and in a new guise are also very effective. Indeed, one cannot but be struck with wonder at the ease, refinement, and success with which Chopin handles here the form, while in almost every work in the larger forms we find him floundering lamentably. It would be foolish and presumptuous to pronounce this or that one of the ballades the finest; but one may safely say that the fourth (in F minor), Op. 52, is fully worthy of her sisters. The emotional key-note of the piece is longing sadness, and this key-note is well preserved ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... and how lamentably was this expedition to end which had commenced so well. They were no longer in search of Harry Grant. This continent, where he was not, and never had been, threatened to prove fatal to those who sought him. And when these intrepid countrymen ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... lamentably barren of good results, were stretched through half the year. But it is necessary to leave them for the time, that we may return and see if the Emperor had better success in the management of the domestic problem referred to ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... evening to relieve him from his duties. He stated that the strain was slowly undermining a constitution which was not so strong as appearances would warrant, and that his knowledge of female nature was lamentably deficient on many important points. "You're doing very well," said the captain, who had no intention of attending any more Dorcases, "very well indeed; ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... called a state of peace. It is certainly not a pax romana. It is most certainly not a pax britannica. It may be a pax teutonica or, rather, a pax borussica, but such as it is, ruinous and demoralizing, it is also lamentably precarious and perilously unstable. And if Germany has kept this pax borussica for forty-two years, it has not been the fault of the German Government. Rather has it been kept because she has been prevented from declaring war by outside interference; ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... of the boys of the night-school went round the village, mumming. They performed the same old piece that Mr. Hardy has described in "The Return of the Native"—the same old piece that, as a little child, I witnessed years ago in a real village; but it had degenerated lamentably. The boys said that they had learnt it from an elder brother of one of them, and had practised it in a shed; and at my request the leader consented to write out the piece, and in due time he brought me his ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... have access to them, are liable, and which often proves trying and painful. One is appealed to in behalf of some person in needy circumstances who wishes to make a living by the pen. A manuscript accompanying the letter is offered for publication. It is not commonly brilliant, too often lamentably deficient. If Rachel's saying is true, that "fortune is the measure of intelligence," then poverty is evidence of limited capacity which it too frequently proves to be, notwithstanding a noble exception here and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... equal to the novelty of the conception. Middleton's style was not marked by any peculiar quality of his own, but was made up, in equal proportions, of the faults and excellences common to his contemporaries.... He is lamentably deficient in the plot and denouement of the story. It is like the rough draft of a tragedy with a number of fine things thrown in, and the best made use of first; but it tends to no fixed goal, and the interest decreases, instead of increasing, as we read on, for want of previous ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... proper one, that I could make no possible objection to it. Much as I sympathised with Lady Glyde in other respects, I could not sympathise with her in her unjust prejudices against Count Fosco. I never before met with any lady of her rank and station who was so lamentably narrow-minded on the subject of foreigners. Neither her uncle's note nor Sir Percival's increasing impatience seemed to have the least effect on her. She still objected to staying a night in London, she still implored her husband not to write ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... can't explain it," she sighed, as if sorely puzzled. "Can it be that we have expended our strength on magazines, where you are so lamentably weak?" ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... provinces. Ephrem, bishop of Erzroom, had once acknowledged the errors of his Church, and had often strongly expressed his desires for reform, though now among the most zealous and persevering of the persecutors. The same was lamentably true of Boghos, Vartabed of Trebizond. Ephrem and Boghos had actually suffered persecution, on the charge of being Protestants. The change in their conduct was owing to the change in their relations, and ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... two days, he said he didn't know but he could. The grippe epidemic had gone down, nothing more strenuous than a few cases of measles stood in the way; in fact, Eastridge at the present time, he averred, was lamentably healthy. When he had committed himself so far as this, he hesitated, ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... my friends, more than upon any other class of men, this great, this lamentably neglected duty devolves. We are to see to it that young limbs and lungs have their rights; we must make men understand that it will be a sin against God, if they do not have their rights; a sin, whose punishment is as certain as the law of gravitation. And more, ...
— A Lecture on Physical Development, and its Relations to Mental and Spiritual Development, delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at their Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting, in Norwich, Conn • S.R. Calthrop
... advantage, since it seems to be exceedingly questionable whether the buildings erected for the accommodation of travellers on the track to Suez will be habitable even for a few hours in the course of another year. The funds of the Steam-committee have been lamentably mismanaged in this instance. However, there being no windows, we were enabled to enjoy the fresh air, and the room we occupied, not having been long ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... which the living temple of God was to be reared! Tertullian and Cyprian, in the third century the two most eminent fathers of the West, countenanced the exposition; [358:2] and though both these writers were lamentably deficient in critical sagacity, men of inferior standing were slow to impugn the verdict of such champions of the faith. Thus it was that a false gloss of Scripture was already enthralling the mind of Christendom; and Stephen boldly renewed the attempt at domination commenced by his predecessor ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... an educational experiment fails lamentably, it is not rejected as a failure. And yet you and I know a number of instances where certain educational experiments that have undeniably reversed the hypotheses of those who initiated them are excused on the ground that conditions were ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... and would have learned that the finest poems of our greatest poets may be enhanced and even transcended when translated into musical language." It is humiliating to be obliged to confess that good schools of singing, the absence of which Vogl deplored, are still lamentably rare, although he himself, by his example, did much to develop the correct method. We have just seen how Wagner obtained valuable hints from Schroeder-Devrient. Similarly, we find that Schubert learned from his friend Vogl, who alone at first could sing his ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... Scripture are lamentably destitute of one recommendation, which he considers as of the highest value: they are by no means in accordance with the general precepts or practice of the Church, from the time when the Christians ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... on Broadway, facing the City Hall, four men were engaged in discussing what was evidently an exciting topic. The door of the main office bore the sign "Edwin James, Counselor-at-Law and Register in Bankruptcy." He was one of the four. He had failed lamentably in his efforts to secure a practice. The effects of O'Gorman's eloquence had in the gray light of commonplace day faded away, the more so when the ideal his magic had created in the minds of men was in hourly contrast with the man himself and his history. ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... generally, decided improvements; but in one instance he failed lamentably. The noble peroration of Lochiel is familiar to ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... quite too irrepressible to be affected by Scottish haar or theology. "Go to the Assemblies, by all means," she said, "and be sure and get places for the heresy case. These are no longer what they once were,—we are getting lamentably weak and gelatinous in our beliefs,—but there is an unusually nice one this year; the heretic is very young and handsome, and quite wicked, as ministers go. Don't fail to be presented at the Marchioness's court at Holyrood, ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... kind and after telling the story of the punishment makes this comment: "It appears that this boy (the one who had been whipped) was the property of a regular slave-dealer, who was then absent at Natchez with a cargo. Mr. Lawe's humanity fell lamentably in my estimation when he stated, that 'whipping niggers, if they were his own, was perfectly right, and they perhaps deserved it; but what made him mad was, that the boy was left under his care by a friend, and he did not like to have a friend's property injured.'"[391] The conduct ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... hermitages were the constant repositories of the bones of the recluse; that the proofs of these are well authenticated; that the revolutions in religion, or the fortune of war, have mangled or buried the dead; that the strongest circumstantial evidence is often lamentably fallacious, that in my case, that evidence, so far from being strong, is weak, disconnected, contradictory; what remains? A conclusion, perhaps, no less reasonably than impatiently wished for. I, at last, after ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... no expediency in this government, as men understand it. The governments of this world are too much founded upon expediency—the government of this country for the last sixty or seventy years lamentably founded upon it. There was a time when there was less of it here, but the disciples of expediency increase, and it is now rather "What is convenient?" than "What is right?" There is an expediency taught in the Bible, but it is nothing more than the best way of doing ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... muttered Borroughcliffe, addressing himself unconsciously to Miss Plowden, near whom he happened to be at the time; "they run their tarry countenances into all the corners of the earth, and abridge a man most lamentably in his comparisons. Now, who the devil would have thought that fellow had ever put his sea-green eyes on ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... divine, so perfect a creature, whom even to see is to taste of bliss! Deign, madam, to—Oh, I say, you don't mean to say you are really of—offended?' Lord Almeric stuttered in amazement, again falling lamentably from the standard of address which he had conned while his man was ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... shade of the barracks. Some were digging roots in the forest, or gathering a kind of sorrel upon the meadows. If they had had any skill in hunting and fishing, the river and the woods would have supplied their needs; but in this point, as in others, they were lamentably unfit for the work they had taken in hand. "Our miserie," says Laudonniere, "was so great that one was found that gathered up all the fish-bones that he could finde, which he dried and beate into powder to make bread thereof. The effects of this hideous ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... somebody, and did not hesitate to say so on all occasions; until, at length, it was painful to listen to a speech of his. I remember, about the time of the Crimean war, when the organisation of the English army was found to be so lamentably deficient, there was a society established in Birmingham called by some such name as "The Administrative Reform Association." A large meeting was held in Bingley Hall, at which all the leading Liberals of ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... her pipe; but doing this she noticed that her hands were trembling. How lamentably she had failed in the preservation, the assertion, of her superiority, not as a Manchu, but in the deeper, the only true ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... my attention. All those who climb up from underground are maimed, with limbs amputated at the joints, some higher up, some lower down. I see one cripple who has only one leg left entire. With this odd limb and the stumps of the others, lamentably tattered, scaly with vermin, he rows, as it were, over the sheet of dust. A comrade emerges, better off for legs, who finishes the invalid and cleans out his abdomen. Thus do my thirteen remaining Necrophori end their days, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... praising the 'cleverness' he asked plainly between the lines of his notice 'What does it mean?' This unconscious exposure of his own ignorance amused his reader while it also piqued him. The critic, expert in dealing with a political article, was lamentably at ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... try the effect of his toad, John took the casket under his arm and went out, and on the way he met two of the little people in a lonesome place. The moment he approached they fell to the ground, and whimpered and howled most lamentably as long as ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... going forward and not backward, Mr. Chesterton notwithstanding. Woman will not become more than a mammal by becoming less, and going back on that great achievement of ascending life. Individuals may do so, and are doing so, lamentably misdirected as many of them now are; but that is the end of them and their kind. It is quite easy to stamp out motherhood and its inevitable economic dependence, but with it you stamp out ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... up to Christmas Eve. With February not far away, and Uncle Joe lamentably liable to have another attack, the Bingles curtailed quite considerably in their preparations for the festivities in honour of the five little Sykeses. They spent but a third of the customary amount in providing presents, and they were not quite sure that they were wise in spending as much as ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... lamentably deficient. Her mind was a garden gone to waste; the weeds flourished, but the good seed refused to take root. It had been found almost impossible to give her even the rudiments of a good education. Governess after governess had come to Pomeroy Court; governess after governess ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... sociologists—lamentably few, I fear—as Graham Wallas would agree that for the attainment of peace we must depend upon some primary human instinct. I venture the prediction that no one of them would select fear as the safe basis. Instead, they surely would ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... telling anecdotes while his play was suspending its action and his characters waiting wearily behind him. It is all wrong, though every great name can be quoted in support of it. Our sense of form is lamentably lacking, and Sir Walter sinned with the rest. But get past all that to a crisis in the real story, and who finds the terse phrase, the short fire-word, so surely as he? Do you remember when the reckless Sergeant of Dragoons stands at last before the grim Puritan, upon whose head a price has been ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... they had lit for guidance. I tip-toed across to the hedge, and, peering over, was relieved of my last doubt: for at the tail of the procession and under charge of one drunken trooper for whipper-in, rode all my poor comrades with arms triced behind them and ankles lamentably looped under ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... carriage, which took Nell, one of the twins, and the Chaperon with me to the Rowing and Yachting Club, where "Mascotte" and "Waterspin" awaited us. This respite gave me time to get on my armor, and fasten up several, if not all the buckles—some of which I realized were lamentably weak. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... that it exposed him to her as consciously hostile and also as almost feminine in his malice. And, as if this recognition of his false move restored to her her full self-mastery, she met his irony with a masculine sincerity, putting him, as on the occasion of their first encounter, lamentably in the wrong. "Ah," she commented, her eyes dwelling on him. "Ah, I see. You have wondered. You have criticized. You have, I think, Mr. Jardine, misunderstood my life and its capacities. Allow me to explain. Your wife is the creature dearest ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... uniformity as the men, and not less picturesque, though more comfortably dressed. Each man had exercised his own taste in his endeavour to give himself a military appearance, though I must say they had most lamentably failed in the result. I honestly confess, as I was speaking to them, that I was forcibly reminded of the appearance my old shipmates and I cut when we first presented ourselves on board the Torbay at the commencement ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... Varambille, with the help of the seven hundred disguised Pyrotists, sent Prince des Boscenos head foremost into a river-laundry in which he was lamentably ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... to a good deal that seems to me lamentably wrong in the behavior of the Boy's Town boys, I ought to remember one or two things to their credit. They had an ideal of honor, false enough as far as resenting insult went, but true in some other things. They were always respectful to women, and if a ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... thrown up!—what would have happened? The estate would have sunk, more and more lamentably, into the power of a certain low attorney who has been Melrose's instrument in all his worst doings for years—and of a pair of corrupt clerks in the local office. Who would have gained? Not a soul! On the contrary, much would have been lost. Heaven knows I have been ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of women that prevailed even in the early Church is admitted by Christian scholars. "We cannot but notice," writes Meyrick (art. "Marriage," Smith and Cheetham, Dictionary of Christian Antiquities), "even in the greatest of the Christian fathers a lamentably low estimate of woman, and consequently of the marriage relationship. Even St. Augustine can see no justification for marriage, except in a grave desire deliberately adopted of having children; and in accordance with this view, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... how the Athenian fleet was destroyed at the siege of Syracuse, where Nicias and Demosthenes were so lamentably defeated, which defeat resulted in the humiliation of Athens and the loss of her power as the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... Lavinia a heartbroken salutation) is a sorcerer. A Greek tailor, he is. A real sorcerer, too: no mistake about it. The tenth marches with a leopard at the head of the column. He made a pet of the leopard; and now he's crying at being parted from it. (Androcles sniffs lamentably). Ain't you, old chap? Well, cheer up, we march with a Billy goat (Androcles brightens up) that's killed two leopards and ate a turkey-cock. You can have him for a pet if you like. (Androcles, quite consoled, goes past the Centurion to Lavinia, and sits down ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... obtaining a better income here, where the ground was comparatively unoccupied, than in London, where there were hundreds of men as well qualified as myself, dependent on literature for their support. I need not add how lamentably I was disappointed. The first inquiries I made were met by advice to endeavor to obtain a livelihood by some other profession than authorship. I could get no employment as a reporter, and the applications I addressed to the editors ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... pitched our tents, they stayed themselves; where one appointed for speaker wearied himself with making a long oration; which done, they left their bows upon the hill, and came down with their presents. In the meantime the women, remaining upon the hill, tormented themselves lamentably, tearing their flesh from their cheeks, whereby we perceived that they were about a sacrifice. In the meantime our General with his company went to prayer, and to reading of the Scriptures, at which exercise they were attentive, and seemed greatly to be affected with it; but ...
— Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World • Francis Pretty
... young men, aside from flowers, candy and an occasional book or piece of music. In some circles, to offer a girl a piece of jewelry would be considered insulting. Not until he is engaged to her may a man offer expensive presents. This rule, it is lamentably true, is often violated by a certain order of young persons, who rather boast of the gifts of their gallants, and are thus the object ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... was so fine," answered Bertha, trying to speak with some show of dignity and composure, but failing lamentably, "that I thought I would enjoy a walk in the capitol grounds. We met Lady Augusta and Lord Linden. Maurice did ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... and repeated absence, I have already lost fifty per cent. in the confiding hopes of the people, and consequently in very power of doing them good. You know, likewise, that the financial interests of the Society have so lamentably declined that we are already largely in arrears. I cannot, therefore, leave, unless I am positively required to do so by ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... was his country, and in his country he had left Jig alone and helpless. A feeling of utter desolation and failure came over him. He had started with a double-goal—Sandersen or Cartwright, or both. He had failed lamentably of reaching either one. He looked back to the sheriff, squat, insignificant, gray-headed. What a man to have ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... snugly on a bag before the fire. Dad kicked him savagely and told him to get out. The dog slunk sulkily to the door, his tail between his legs, and his back humped as if expecting another kick. He got it. Dad sat in the ashes then, and groaned lamentably. The dog walked in at the back door and dropped ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... historian, as well as an excellent judge of antiquarian pursuits, has followed up Gibbon's mode of attack in a yet more merciless manner. He calls him "Thomas Hearne, of black-letter memory, carbone notandus"—"a weaker man (says he) never existed, as his prefaces, so called, lamentably show." He continues in this hard-hearted strain: but I have too much humanity to make further extracts. He admits, however, the utility of most of Hearne's publications—"of which he was forced to publish a few copies, at an extravagant subscription." The remarks ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Reformed Parliaments have lamentably failed to attain it for us; and I believe will and must forever fail. One true Reforming Statesman, one noble worshipper and knower of human intellect, with the quality of an experienced Politician too; he, backed ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... begun and could lead to much-needed revenue in the long run. The inequality of income distribution is one of the most extreme in the world. The government and international donors continue to work out plans to forward economic development from a lamentably low base. In December 2003, the World Bank, IMF, and UNDP were forced to step in to provide emergency budgetary support in the amount of $107 million for 2004, representing over 80% of the total national budget. Government drift and indecision, ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... if it existed in full and vigorous play, would go far to improve our condition, and raise us in the esteem of Christian nations. Nevertheless, as compared with now, the state of things then was lamentably imperfect. ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... fact, sadly wanting in information respecting the disposition of the soft and destructible organs of every Race of Mankind but our own; and even of the skeleton, our Museums are lamentably deficient in every part but the cranium. Skulls enough there are, and since the time when Blumenbach and Camper first called attention to the marked and singular differences which they exhibit, skull collecting and skull measuring has been a zealously ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... his paper manufactory at St. Mande, and has been subsequently confined in Sainte Pelagie for debt. His embarrassments are stated to have arisen from a passion for gambling, a propensity which, once indulged, takes deep root in the human mind; and few indeed, lamentably few, are those who can effectually eradicate the fatal passion. Vidocq, who could assume all shapes like a second Proteus, who underwent bitter hardships, and unsparingly jeopardized his life at any time, could not resist the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... opposition to law, or even general opposition to English law. The statistics of ordinary crime are (it is said) no higher in Ireland than in other parts of the United Kingdom. A pickpocket or a burglar is as easily convicted in Ireland as elsewhere; the persons who lamentably enough are either left unpunished, or if punished may count on popular sympathy, are criminals whose offences, atrocious and cruel as they constantly are, are connected in popular opinion with political, and at bottom, it must be added, with agrarian questions. For more than a century ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... rejoined, "is lamentably foolish, cruelly wrong. Still, perverted as it is, there is something generous, something noble, in the motive which has led him. As for your conduct in this matter, I see nothing but what is mean, nothing but what is cowardly, in the motive ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... of the Senecan school lay in improved dialogue. This was possible in four directions, namely, in more stirring topics, in more personal feeling, in shorter speeches, and in a change in the style of language and verse. Unfortunately for Thomas Hughes, it is just here that he fails, and fails lamentably. What is more, he fails because of his methods. The dominant desire of the English 'classical' school was to be impressive. Hence the adoption by Hughes of a ghostly introduction and conclusion. His conversations, therefore, must reflect the same idea. He saw, indeed, that long speeches, except ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... exhaustion; and how many live in the same way, plodding through life, growing old before their time, losing power, or magnetism, which is power, every day. Such persons close their eyes to any light one might throw upon their path, and I see no way, but for all such to remain where they are. It is lamentably true that comparatively few of the inhabitants of earth are growing people; most of them are content with a slow, dull routine of daily life. I'd rather see persons full of zeal and purpose, even though their impulsive nature might lead them to commit many ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... my room I was shown to it by a bright-eyed, garrulous Cuban youth named "Josepho," who was well acquainted with his own, but lamentably ignorant of the English language. He tried to compensate for this drawback by a copious and intelligent use of gesture. Josepho soon led me to my room, which stood at the end of a corridor, that was flanked on one side by the courtyard, and on the other by ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... Parliament, on which the nation had set such high hopes and to which it had sent so much of what was noblest in itself, contrasted lamentably with the splendour of its opening. Whether a better result would have been attained if, instead of claiming supreme authority in the construction of Federal union, the Assembly had from the first sought the co-operation of the Governments, must remain matter ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... Protestants of Prague were wild with joy. In the great Cathedral they pulled off the ornaments and destroyed costly pictures. What part did the Brethren play in these abominations? We do not know. At this tragic point in their fateful story our evidence is so lamentably scanty that it is absolutely impossible to say what part they played in the revolution. But one thing at least we know without a doubt. We know that the Catholics were now united and the Protestants quarrelling with each other; we know that Ferdinand was prompt and vigorous, and the new King ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... catch a thief. You must remember that for fifteen years Cal hasn't had any of the pie except in a minor way, and all this time he's been fighting Stone tooth and toe-nail. The late reform movement, which failed so lamentably to carry out its gaudy promises after it had won, left him entirely out of its calculations, and Lewis actually joined with Stone in overturning it. I propose to use Lewis' knowledge of political machinery, but in my ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... English verse by Lydgate, to be read as a supplementary Tale of Canterbury: "Here begynneth the sege of Thebes, ful lamentably told by Johnn Lidgate monke of Bury, annexynge it to ye tallys of Canterbury," MS. Royal 18 D ii. in the British Museum. The exquisite miniatures of this MS. represent Thebes besieged with great guns, fol. 158; Creon's coronation by two bishops wearing mitres and gold copes, fol. 160, see below, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... separated offshoots, the Greek Catholic and the Protestant Churches, including the numberless ramifications and divisions of the latter. The question as to whether eternal salvation is a function of complete immersion of the human body, or only a gentle sprinkling, appears most lamentably puerile in the face of the tremendous revolutionary truths hinted by the deeds of Jesus, assuming that he has been correctly reported in the Gospels. No; Renan, in his Vie de Jesus, which I gave you last night, missed ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... duty, requiring the concentration of the whole national strength, is imposed upon us, that the labour classes will not withhold their co-operation, and that, in face of a common danger, our nation will recover that unity which is lamentably ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... less to grumble at personally than most others concerning the treatment which, as a young man, I experienced at the hands of editors; but I must say that the majority of such potentates with whom I then came in contact lamentably lacked that readiness to welcome new-comers which Miss Florence Marryat notably, and possibly too readily, evinced. Here I may offer a hint to beginners—that on coming to London letters of introduction ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... recent heavy losses, had turned back before crossing the line of the coast. Cary and his wife fell upon my neck, for we were old friends, condoled with me, fed me, and prescribed a tall glass of mulled port flavoured with cloves. My stern views upon the need for Prohibition in time of war became lamentably weakened. ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... the older folk had not yet got their "winter legs," there were many minor casualties. Mrs. Uncle Life, aged seventy and small and spherical, solved the problem of the hills by sitting down and sliding. She commended the method to me, saying that it served very well on week days, but was lamentably detrimental ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... thing for infinite compassion. For were they not privy to the doom that the morrow, or the morrow's morrow, held for him—held not indeed for him alone, yet for him especially, as it were, and for him most lamentably? ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... experimental and inventive tendency, was generally believed to have poisoned himself with an infallible panacea of his own distillation),— since that final bereavement, Dr. Dolliver's once pretty flourishing business had lamentably declined. After a few months of unavailing struggle, he found it expedient to take down the Brazen Serpent from the position to which Dr. Swinnerton had originally elevated it, in front of his shop in the main street, and to retire to his private dwelling, situated in a by-lane and ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... under the window of the mysterious cabin but its savage inhabitant preferred wandering between decks and in the hold; it seemed impossible to tame him, and no one had been able to become his master; during the night he howled lamentably, making the hollows of the ship ring in a sinister fashion. Was it regret for his absent master? Was it the instinct of knowing that he was starting for a perilous voyage? Was it a presentiment of dangers to come? The sailors decided that it was for the latter reason, and ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... fact that before the Civil War an officer of the army needed no indorser anywhere in this country. His check or his pay account was as good as gold. All that was required was identification. It is lamentably true that such has not been the case ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... Chavotine. Nor, except at Troyon, were they near the Chemin des Dames; and not only had the river to be crossed, but the formidable slopes, which the Germans had beeen meticulously fortifying for two and a half years, to be surmounted. The results of the first day's onslaught fell lamentably short of the extravagant anticipations. The banks of the Aisne were cleared, some progress was made up the slopes, and from Troyon, where the original line was nearly on the ridge, an advance was made along it. But on the whole the Germans maintained their grip on the Chemin des Dames. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... colleagues in the Senate or at the Cabinet table, nor who has been more easily successful up to a certain point or so singularly unsuccessful beyond it. He has done valiant service for his country but he has failed lamentably to reach the heights from which he could ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... everybody had forgotten her existence. "She must have been at least seventy; but it was said that her voice had miraculously returned, and was as good as ever. But when she displayed those wonderfully revived powers, they proved, as might have been expected, lamentably deficient, and the tones she produced were compared to those of a penny trumpet. Curiosity was so little excited that the concert was ill attended ... and Madame Mara was heard no more. I was not so lucky ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... with less than half his former energy and intellect; not at all an idiot, however, though somewhat more helpless—the poor mutilated fragment of a reasoning man. Among his other failings, he stuttered lamentably. He became an inmate of the kitchen of Cromarty House; and learned to run, or, I should rather say, to limp, errands—for he had risen from the fever that ruined him to run no more—with great fidelity and success. He was fond ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... try the effect of his toad, John took the casket under his arm and went out, and on the way he met two of the little people in a lonesome place. The moment he approached them they fell to the ground, and whimpered and howled most lamentably, as long as ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... missing cat. This was no hiding in cupboard work, no marked coin work, no following the skittish wife of a greengrocer work. It was the real thing—real detective work, and it had found Mr. Brunger most lamentably wanting. Till now, however, none had suspected his perplexity. He had impressed his client—had bounced, noted, cross- examined, measured; and during every bounce, note, cross-examination and measurement fervently had prayed that luck—or the reward—would ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... generally a la Francoise; have straight figures, and with the help of a little cotton, judiciously disposed, and sometimes, the smallest possible portion of rouge, contrive to look rather interesting; in general, they are lamentably deficient in tournure and en-bon-point. The hands and feet of the greatest belle, are pas mignon, and would be termed plebeian by the Anglo-Normans—the aristocracy of England. Yet I have seen many girls ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... the Bible is by the author of the Ecclesiae Regimen, and the author of this is Purvey. I must repeat that the chain seems to me lamentably weak, and that the resemblances which may be found between Section xv. of the Prologue and Trevisa's Dialogue and Letter to Lord Berkeley are stronger, because not arising out of quite such common topics. ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... way of the cannon and the rapid-fire guns, and so underwent partial or complete destruction as the result of an accidental yet inevitable and unavoidable process. Of these last France, to the square mile, could offer as lamentably large a showing as Belgium; but buildings that presented indubitable signs of having been fired with torches rather than ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... the principles on which our system rests, and to become thoroughly imbued with their spirit. This will necessitate an acquaintance with the nature and details of our political creed, of which our women, especially, are lamentably ignorant. How many out of every hundred, do you suppose, have even read the Constitution, for instance? You may say that the majority of men have never studied it either, even of the voters. I admit the fact. There is a terrible lack of information among even men on public subjects. But I think ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... crush all patronage at a blow; any system of patronage would lamentably limit the number of candidates among whom his examination papers would be distributed. He longed to behold, crowding around him, an attendance as copious as Mr. Spurgeon's, and to see every head bowed over the posing questions which he should ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... their apprehensions were too soon realised! Within a very few minutes of the time that Mr. Rogers gained the rock, an universal shriek, which long vibrated in their ears, in which the voice of female distress was lamentably distinguished, announced the dreadful catastrophe. In a few moments all was hushed, except the roaring of the winds and the dashing of the waves; the wreck was buried in the deep, and not an atom of ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... Katuti went in the lamentably incorrect epistle—which she could only decipher with difficulty—which her darling had written to her, the paler grew her face, which she several times covered with her trembling hands, from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... afar, round the unhallowed cell, One heard a voice of wailing loud and long, And went and told his lord: who coming near Was haunted by the dim and bitter cry, And suddenly exclaiming on his fate Said lamentably, 'My prophetic heart Divined aright. I am going, of all ways That e'er I went, the unhappiest to-day. My son's voice smites me. Go, my men, approach With speed, and, where the stones are torn away, Press through the passage to that door of death, ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... only you mustn't stand with your arm round your partner in this way when you are done. You must seat and fan her, if she likes it," said Rose, anxious to perfect a pupil who seemed so lamentably in ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... establishment and appeared, on the surface, at least, very chit-chatty indeed. So much so, that T. A. Buck, glancing up from the cards which had preceded them, had difficulty in repressing a frown of annoyance. T. A. Buck, during his college-days, and for a lamentably long time after, had been known as "Beau" Buck, because of his faultless clothes and his charming manner. His eyes had something to do with it, too, no doubt. He had lived down the title by sheer force of business ability. ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... and then an egg, and hatched a chicken; not for any pleasure of their own, but that the world might not absolutely lose what had once been so admirable a breed of fowls. The distinguishing mark of the hens was a crest of lamentably scanty growth, in these latter days, but so oddly and wickedly analogous to Hepzibah's turban, that Phoebe—to the poignant distress of her conscience, but inevitably—was led to fancy a general resemblance betwixt these forlorn bipeds and ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of Catherine, are as conspicuous as her high intelligence, her indomitable will, her majestic commanding power. The reign of Elizabeth is perhaps the most glorious in English history, but the character of that great Queen is lamentably tarnished by waywardness and caprice. Among purely constitutional Sovereigns Queen Anne holds a respectable, though certainly not a brilliant, place, and it may be added that much of the merit of the very constitutional though not very glorious reign ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... dreadful deed, and all the more dreadful that it appeared to a whole people great and praiseworthy. Never perhaps has a commonwealth more lamentably declared itself bankrupt, than did Rome through this resolution—adopted in cold blood by the majority of the government and approved by public opinion— to put to death in all haste a few political prisoners, who were no ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... hand, plying them with careful questions intended to increase our modest store of knowledge. The replies were unsatisfactory, commonplace, sometimes ludicrous. Attempts to write a passable textbook on life in the spirit world have failed lamentably. The indignation of the sorely disappointed scientist was voiced by the late Professor Hugo Muensterberg, of Harvard, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... sub-editor of numerous journals. But he had lost each one in turn, and was beginning to understand that he was fated to die of poverty, and was beginning to grow tired of the useless struggle. No one was better organized to earn his living than Peter Sands, and no one failed more lamentably. Had fortune provided him with a dinner at Simpson's, a cigar and a cup of coffee, he would have lived as successfully as another. But our civilization is hard upon those who are only conversationalists, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... blow on the head with the back of his hand and knocked her into the bottom of the cart, where she crouched, thrown about lamentably by every jolt. He drove furiously, standing up, brandishing his whip, shaking the reins over the gray horse that galloped ponderously, making the heavy harness leap upon his broad quarters. The country rang clamorous in the night with the irritated ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... tall, but lamentably thin and slight, poor dear, with her mother's piercing black eyes and the very fair curly locks of her papa—a curious and most effective contrast—and features and a complexion of such extraordinary delicacy and loveliness that it almost gave one pain in the midst ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... girl, who was laying herself out to be taken a fancy to. In short, she trusted to her own judgment, and it failed her, as usual. I wrote very kindly to her from abroad, telling her how sincerely I sympathized with her in her distress at finding how entirely her judgment had been at fault, how lamentably she had been deceived from first to last, and how much trouble she had been the innocent means of bringing on the family. I have had no reply. Dear Aunt Mary! That reminds me that she is in London now; and I think a call from me, and a personal expression of sympathy, might give ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... Evadne," his brother had written, "giving full and minute explanations as to her best course in the matter. These she will follow implicitly, under your supervision, and I feel confident the result will be a well-developed character along the lines on which women, through no fault of their own, are so lamentably deficient, namely, the proper conduct of business and ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... are many excellent books extant which might greatly forward you in this knowledge. There is a great defect in many, that through a lothness to be at a little expense, they provide themselves with no more helps of this nature." Weighty, wise, and lamentably true words. ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... particular, magnificence, I and those of my threadbare species are most lamentably deficient. To the proving of this end shall ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... degree] furiously &c (violence) 173; severely, desperately, tremendously, extravagantly, confoundedly, deucedly, devilishly, with a vengeance; a outrance^, a toute outrance [Fr.]. [in a painful degree] painfully, sadly, grossly, sorely, bitterly, piteously, grievously, miserably, cruelly, woefully, lamentably, shockingly, frightfully, dreadfully, fearfully, terribly, horribly. Phr. a maximis ad minima [Lat.]; greatness knows itself [Henry IV]; mightiest powers by deepest calms are fed [B. Cornwall]; minimum decet libere cui multum licet [Lat.] [Seneca]; some are born great, some achieve ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... taking this year is simply because we are unable to procure any return for a later one. The number of convictions for murder in England and Wales in the year 1826 was thirteen, and the number convicted of wounding, etc., with intent to kill, was fourteen. These numbers are lamentably large. That the horrible crime of murder should ever be perpetrated is a most melancholy fact; and that so many as thirteen murders should be committed in one year must fill the mind of every moral man and lover of his country with grief and shame. But great as this number is absolutely, it sinks ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... call us together," says the next deposition, "and lamentably mourning for the dissolving the said houses, he enjoined us to sing 'Salvator mundi, salva nos omnes,' every day after lauds; and we murmured at it, and were not content to sing it for such cause; and so we did omit it divers days, for which the abbot came unto the chapter, and did in manner rebuke ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... help laughing aloud as I sat and tried to realize my new position. Mr. Prime's business was as yet, I soon perceived, lamentably small. The office was commodious, but my employer had besides me only a book-keeper to help him,—a gaunt, withered-looking man of sixty. This personage glanced at me now and again over his spectacles suspiciously, and would, I dare say, have joined hands with my enemy the police officer, ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... and to distribute among them the second-hand books and clothing that were sent, largely by her Boston friends, to aid her in her work; to find out what they knew, to classify them by their intelligence rather than by their knowledge, for they were all lamentably ignorant. Some among them were the children of parents who had been free before the war, and of these some few could read and one or two could write. One paragon, who could repeat the multiplication table, was immediately promoted to the position of ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... religious exercises, to cast out the evil spirit and render the animal serviceable. The apostles and disciples, it would be remembered, often succeeded in casting out evil spirits; though sometimes, we are told, they lamentably failed. ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... comforts and necessaries of life—if the government had have been deriving any actual revenue, and if it could have realised a capital from the sale of them—then we admit that the donation would have been unexampled in the history of individual or national liberality. But how lamentably different from all thus was the ...
— Texas • William H. Wharton
... in dumb agony. Colette's foul walls and maculate table-linen, and even down to Colette's villainous casters, seemed like objects in a nightmare. And just then there came a knock and a scurrying; the police, so lamentably absent from the Calton Hill, appeared upon the scene; and the party, taken FLAGRANTE DELICTO, with their glasses at their elbow, were seized, marched up to the police office, and all duly summoned to appear as witnesses in the consequent ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sea is out of breath, And sinks most lamentably. Had our general Been what he knew himself, it had gone well: O, he has given example for our flight Most grossly by ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... effecting it being exceedingly limited, and our fingers unused to the work. It was a sight to see O'Gaygun, his philosophy and gallantry at war with one another, sewing blue flannel patches on a red shirt, and groaning lamentably over ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... it," I told her gloomily, "you are displaying a lamentably vulgar interest in one of life's lesser values. Happiness, not money, should be ...
— Lighter Than You Think • Nelson Bond
... permitted no part in the management of their own affairs. The rumor of these injuries and disabilities had got abroad, and no recruits for the colony had been obtainable; the Indians were ill-disposed, and the houses poor and few. Women too were lamentably scanty, and the people had no root in the country, and no thought but to leave it. Like the emigrants to the Klondike gold-fields in our own day, they had designed only to better their fortunes and then depart. The former hope was gone; the ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... sterility. Though it is daylight still, the sun has long passed behind them, and the air is chilled and mouldy. The village is merely one long, shaky street crouching in along the side of the mountain; it is lamentably near the torrent, for the rough Gave de Bastan just below is one of the scourges of the Pyrenees, and each spring it tears by and even through the street, and scours down the valley, swollen and resentful, causing discouraging ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... life, vitality, sufficient to burn away the fog, or does he live and die in a moist, semi-impenetrable fog, in which he flounders timidly and rather aimlessly about, always rather discouraged, rather in the dark, and lamentably damp in person and in spirits? The only fair test of a man's life is his living of it, and the same ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... of the founders of the firm of Jardine, Matheson, & Co., so well known in China as well as along this coast. The station is for cattle, and they are gradually increasing its boundaries so as to be able to supply Thursday Island and the neighbourhood with fresh meat, of which they are lamentably in need at present. About twenty-five years ago Mr. Jardine drove a mob of 700 cattle from Rockhampton to this place. It took him and his party nearly two years to accomplish the journey, and they had to fight the blacks on ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... Oaklands, dismounting slowly and with effort, for he was still lamentably weak, "I have not seen you in a habit so long, I declare I should scarcely have known you; the effect ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Mdme. de Verzenay's efforts to promote an entente cordiale were lamentably foiled. When the English mustered strong, they would immediately form themselves into a hollow square, the weakest in the centre, and so defy the assaults of the enemy. Now and then a daring Gaul would attempt the adventure of the Enchanted Castle, determined, if not to ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... they called the young man by his name, but he not answering, their fears increased. They proceeded to seek him; and at length found him lying upon the bed with the knife in his heart, for I had not power to take it out. At this sight they cried out lamentably, which increased my sorrow: the old man fell down in a swoon. The slaves, to give him air, brought him up in their arms, and laid him at the foot of the tree where I was concealed; but notwithstanding all the pains they took to recover him, the unfortunate ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... from office; for though the Prime Minister urged many things in his defense, and more particularly the misapprehension which his present retirement might cause, the King remained obdurate; he was bent upon making an example. In the great political game he had miscalculated and lamentably failed, but red-tape was still his cherished possession; and you can do a good deal with red-tape when you have an unquestioned authority to fall back upon. Professor Teller's volumes of Constitutional History still lay upon a retired shelf in ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... the moment had come when they could go to war and leave Great Britain out of all calculations. So studying only the German mind, believing that all peoples in national character are like the Germans, the Great General Staff, the greatest military aggregation the world has ever seen, failed lamentably, whenever the human element became the factor in the situation. Its military successes have been marvellous; its judgments of mankind ridiculous. Its errors of judgment ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... not all the gossip of Naples, and therefore cannot answer; but I know this, that in England no one would believe that a young Englishman, of good fortune and respectable birth, who marries a singer from the theatre of Naples, has not been lamentably taken in. I would save you from a fall of position so irretrievable. Think how many mortifications you will be subjected to; how many young men will visit at your house,—and how many young wives will ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... elf-prince was really no larger than your little finger,—so you will see that so far as physical proportions were concerned Dewlove and Beambright were pretty well matched. Merry, merry fellows they were, and I should certainly fail most lamentably did I attempt to tell you how prettily they danced upon the greensward of the meadowlands throughout the summer nights. Sometimes the other fairies and elves joined them,—delicate little lady fairies with gossamer wings, and chubby little lady elves clad in filmy ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... that I had transgressed, but how, I most honestly confess, I could not guess; for though I certainly was the senior of my fair companion in years, I was most lamentably her junior in tact ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... same period has witnessed the rise and fall of two chess clubs, the Westminster formed in 1867, at Covent Garden, and the West End in Coventry St., in 1875, both (wonderfully successful at first), having lamentably failed through the predominating card influence and lack of undivided fealty and devotion to their legitimate and avowed objects, viz., the chivalrous practice and earnest cultivation of the noble and royal game ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... stools the manufactured scholar would fall lamentably to the ground. He would be neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. There would be a perpetual chopping and changing in the methods of his education, from which he would not even derive the benefit, so gratefully acknowledged ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... much of himself; a richer and more spiritual nature would have thought his ideals lamentably poor. But, such as they were, the past year had proved that he could not fall below them without a dumb anguish, without a sense of shutting himself out from grace. He felt himself—by his fear of his wife—made a partner in Hannah's covetousness, in Hannah's cruelty towards Sandy's children. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fairs have done exhibitors much good is doubtful; that they have benefited the thinking portion of their attendants is unquestionable. Unfortunately, the thinking portion of a farming community is lamentably small. Most people go to a "cattle-show" to be amused; a few go to learn. The few that derive benefit from seeing the wonders of the earth collected in pens and on tables are helped just as a teacher gets benefit from a teacher's institute—both ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... paced back and forth again some half-dozen times, before he emerged from the chapel door. In her present humour she did not want him, yet she resented his abstraction. The physician of the soul, like the physician of the body, appeared to her lamentably devoid of power to sustain and give comfort at the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... out of a hole in the trunk of the banyan about five feet from the ground, I saw a pale face and a pair of large mustachios, one clipped short and the other as lamentably out of curl as the tail of a newly whipped pug. Then, for the first time, I realized what I had suspected before — namely, that Alphonse was an arrant coward. I walked up to him. 'Come out of ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... advantageous for his rising family, he removed, in 1814, to Trottick, within two miles of Dundee, where he assumed the management of the branch of a London house, which for many years had been connected with his own firm. This step was lamentably unfortunate; the house, in which he had embarked his fortune, shared in the general commercial disasters of 1815, and was involved in complete bankruptcy. Reduced to a condition of dependance, Balfour accepted the situation of manager of a manufacturing establishment at Balgonie, in Fife. In ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... were in the buggy, the impatient horse swung into the road at a rattling pace, and as Marietta leaned back in the seat, thinking of what she had done, she cried lamentably, in spite of all the caresses and ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... purposes depends altogether on how consistent and exact it is. Every "thing" must be interpreted as a "configuration," every "event" as a change of configuration, every predicate ascribed must be of a geometrical sort. Measured by these requirements of mechanics Spencer's attempt has lamentably failed. His terms are vagueness and ambiguity incarnate, and he seems incapable of keeping the mechanical point of view in mind for ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... cadences from Spenser for his lyrics. I need hardly say that in those eclogues (May, for example) where Spenser thought he was imitating what wiseacres used to call the riding-rhyme of Chaucer, he fails most lamentably. He had evidently learned to scan his master's verses better when he wrote his ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... saengerfest came at a lamentably inopportune time! I regret to Inform you that old Bannister faces another problem, with regard to Thor, and unless it ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... the British, the enemy quitted Fort Edward, and retreated to Saratoga. All kinds of provisions and stores had already reached Fort George; but the means of transport were lamentably deficient, and the impossibility of bringing up supplies compelled the army to a fatal inaction. On the 15th of August, after a fortnight's incessant exertion, there were only four ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... of them would be without this tincture. If the world like it not, so much the worse for them. I make all the concessions I can, that I may please them, but I will not please them at the expense of conscience." The passages of The Task penned by conscience, taken together, form a lamentably large proportion of the poem. An ordinary reader can be carried through them, if at all, only by his interest in the history of opinion, or by the companionship of the writer, who is always present, as ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... and in that time something less than 300 persons were burnt at the stake.[664] "By imprisonment," said Lord Burghley, "by torment, by famine, by fire, almost the number of 400 were," in their various ways, "lamentably destroyed." ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... How lamentably the art of versification is neglected by most of the poets of the present day!—by Lord Byron, as it strikes me, in particular, among those of eminence for other qualities. Upon the whole, I think the part of Don Juan in which Lambro's return to his home, and ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... nearest factory and get all hands out," he explained, adding meditatively, as he chewed on a twig: "All the same, the incident shows what I've always maintained about Molly: that she is, like 'most everybody, lamentably miscast. Molly's spirit oughtn't to have taken up its abiding place in that highly ornamental blond shell, condemned after a fashionable girl's education to pendulum swings between Paris and New York and Lydford. It doesn't fit for a cent. It ought to have for habitation ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... Two of his children were sickly: one,—little misshapen Mary,—died on the passage, and, in her father's words, "was the first in our ship that was buried in the bowels of the great Atlantic sea;" the other, who had been "most lamentably handled" by disease, recovered almost entirely "by the very wholesomeness of the air, altering, digesting, and drying up the cold and crude humors of the body." Wherefore, he thinks it a wise course for all cold complexions to come to take physic in New England, and ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... know the thrill of professional pride in a good job well done: Dupont was grinning at his work, and so intent upon it that his first intimation of any interference came when Lanyard took him from behind, broke his hold upon the woman (and lamentably failed to break his back at the same time) whirled him round with a jerk that all but unsocketed an arm and, before the thug could regain his balance, placed surely on the heel of his jaw, just below the ear, a blow that, coming straight from the shoulder and carrying ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... recorded for the use of future historians. Yet it is safe to say that no man of all the island dwellers ever did or ever will tread the stairs or look from the octagonal windows with a more intense individuality than that of Billy Clark, Nantucket's town crier, now lamentably dead since 1907. Each afternoon he climbed to the crow's nest with horn under his arm to watch for the daily incoming steamer. He could sight it about an hour before it would dock and as soon as he did the horn blew grandly ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... their architecture, they saw very clearly the function of the arts in relation to each other, and kept their sculpture and their colour in strict relation to the aesthetic purpose of their architecture. It is a point on which later architects went lamentably astray. A great deal of early Renaissance work is mere ornamentation of buildings, indeed in buildings such as the Certosa of Pavia the architecture has almost ceased to exist; and most of the bad architecture of the last ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... with Israel and Judah in the text, who united together in making a covenant with the Lord. Whence all the people of God, who are called to be united and "perfectly joined together in the same spirit, and in the same mind;" and especially they who have been lamentably divided one from another, by their manifold defections from God, and from their covenant-engagements, ought to be strongly inclined, moved, and engaged to this duty; from this consideration, the upright covenant-renewing is a usual mean of land-uniting ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... Glasgow—his first and only charge. This was in the year 1822 when William was only in his twenty-third year. At the time he entered upon the charge of John Street Church, the congregation was in anything but a flourishing condition. Rent by dissentions from without and from within, it was in a lamentably disorganised state, and presented a decidedly uninviting sphere for the maiden efforts of a young and inexperienced minister. But William Anderson was neither disheartened nor dismayed. He approached the work of reconstructing ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... Something happens,—we wilfully shut our eyes to the fact that this something has changed forever the current of our lives, and if the new current seems evil, if it brings discomfort, separation, change of circumstance, etc., we worry, and worry, and continue to worry. This is lamentably foolish, utterly absurd and altogether reprehensible. Let us resolutely face the facts, accept them, and then reshape our lives, bravely and valiantly, to suit ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... piteous wail that broke from her. "I swear I had not thought of that. I was all distraught for poor Richard's sake. Oh, Mr. Wilding," she turned to him, holding out a hand; her eyes shone, filmed with moisture, "I shall have a kindness for you.., all my days for your... generosity to-day." It was lamentably weak, far from the hot expressions which she ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... Hamilton had behaved to him as no brother officer should behave. Hamilton had spoken harshly and cruelly in the matter of a commission with which he had entrusted his subordinate, and with which the aforesaid subordinate had lamentably failed to cope. ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... little Arthur, who caught hold of his hand, exclaiming, "So you have won me, and shall keep me forever, Uncle Eustace; but come in, for here is poor old Sir Philip, who was thrown down under the table in the scuffle, bemoaning himself most lamentably." ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... recalled to a sense of his humanity by a cold perspiration and a deathly qualm. Hiccups burst from him no longer; but they were succeeded by another and a louder series of sound—sounds familiar to everybody who has ever been at sea—sounds nautically and lamentably associated with white basins, whirling waves, and misery of mortal stomachs wailing in ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... we had matured our plans, and, as our present business seemed lamentably slow in the light of my gigantic projects, I was eager enough to begin work in earnest. I had proved our telegraph thoroughly, and, ere I set out for London, to establish there a branch of the house of John Meavy & Co., I advised my good comrade to venture largely, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... been, not rumours unfavourable to Lady Clavering's reputation, but unpleasant impressions regarding her ladyship. The best English people abroad were shy of making her acquaintance; her manners were not the most refined; her origin was lamentably low and doubtful. The retired East Indians, who are to be found in considerable force in most of the continental towns frequented by English, spoke with much scorn of the disreputable old lawyer and indigo-smuggler her father, and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... held her face away. He was in manifest distress, hardly master of his voice, begged me to come to him soon, and bowing, with 'God bless you, madam, my friend on earth!' turned his heel, bearing his elastic frame lamentably. A sad or a culprit air did not befit him: one reckoned up his foibles and errors when seeing him under a partly beaten aspect. At least, I did; not my dear aunt, who was compassionate of him, however thoroughly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Postlethwaite nose had withdrawn its support from that pale flesh of funk. If it had any clear meaning at all it expressed a terrified expectation of blackmail. His very moustache and hair drooped lamentably. ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... of military readiness, in which the United States was so lamentably deficient, the natural advantages in her possession for the invasion of Canada were very great. The Hudson River, Lake George, and Lake Champlain furnished a line of water communication, for men and supplies, from the very heart of the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... that people should go on existing by the million in the towns, preying on each other, and getting continually out of work, with all those other depressing concomitants of an awkward state, distressed him. While suburban life, that living in little rows of slate-roofed houses so lamentably similar that no man of individual taste could bear to see them, he much disliked. Yet, in spite of his strong prejudice in favour of country-house life, he was not a rich man, his income barely ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... terrified the people; these were excessive whirlwinds, and lightnings; and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine soon followed these tokens: and a little after that, in the same year, on the 6th of the Ides of January, the ravaging of heathen men lamentably destroyed God's church at Lindisfarn, through rapine and slaughter. And Siega died on the 8th of the Kalends ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... friends, that, in the praiseworthy effort to pay his debts, he was sacrificing his health and shortening his life. Those apprehensions proved not without foundation. In the autumn of 1831, his health became so lamentably broken, that his medical advisers recommended a residence in Italy, and entire cessation from mental occupation, as the only means of invigorating a constitution so seriously dilapidated. But the counsel came too late; the patient proceeded to Naples, and afterwards to Rome, but experiencing no ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... gentleman and does not attack people for the pleasure of it, and it is lamentably true that people who live in cities often find it necessary to keep some sort of a dog as a guardian to life and property. In spite of his loyalty, which every one admits, the dog is an absolute slave. Men with less sense, and less morality, constitute ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... allready fallen in to contention with y^e church y^t was ther before them, & no means they could use would doe any good to cure y^e same, and also that y^e flames of contention were like to breake out in y^t anciente church it selfe (as affterwards lamentably came to pass); which things they prudently foreseeing, thought it was best to remove, before they were any way engaged with y^e same; though they well knew it would be much to y^e prejudice of their outward estats, both at presente & in licklyhood ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... are a common-sense and practical people, but a people impervious to ideas; that they are quick at the invention of expedients, but slow to recognize and follow general principles. This statement may be true of the nation as a whole; but it is lamentably untrue in respect of our politicians. They do somehow now and again get ideas into their heads, and when once they are there it seems as though nothing on earth or from heaven can eradicate them. I suppose that the explanation of this steadfast consistency, or unteachable obstinacy, ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... paper has been lamentably wasted to prove that science has destroyed, that it is destroying, or, some day, may destroy poetry. Meantime, unblushing, unseen, and often unheard, the guileless poets have gone on singing in a sweet strain. How they dare do the impossible and virtually ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... which was to them the gage and pledge of God's favour towards them: for it was the inheritance that God promised to Abraham, and to his seed for ever. The league and covenant of God's protection appeared to have been broken—they lamentably complain that they saw not their accustomed signs of God's merciful presence. The true prophets were few, and the abominations used in Babylon were exceedingly many: and so it might have appeared to them, that in vain it ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox
... They are lamentably comme tout le monde, after all. They are only interesting when the mad fit seizes them. When free from their awful complaint they are for the most part very common mortals: conventional Philistines, dull dogs like myself, and dull dogs do not ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al |
